Living with ‘Dragons and Makarakshas’: Politics of Dharmasiri Bandaranayake’s Theatre

by Athulasiri Kumara Samarakoon
 (The Open University of Sri Lanka / smak918@gmail.com)

I have watched only three plays by veteran director cum actor Dharmasiri Bandaranaiyake; namely Euripides’ ‘Trojan Women’ (Trojan Kanthawo), ‘The Dictator’ (Eka Adipathi) and ‘The Dragon’ (Makarakshaya) (originally by Soviet playwright Yevgeney Shvarts). Of these three, ‘The Dictator’ and ‘The Dragon’ have been reproduced, currently being staged for a new generation of audience, about 3o years younger to the original productions of these plays. Can this re-production, or say, re-contextualization of old plays, still produce a certain appeal in terms of conveying its message (politics) to an audience living in different economic and social conditions, a different historical time?

According to Piyaseeli Wijegunasinghe (I refer to the brochure distributed at the opening show of the reproduction of ‘The Dragon’ at the Lionel Wendt with a quote from her 1985 article in Aththa newspaper,) ‘a play written during a certain historical and social context, under the limitations and constraints imposed on the artist by the same social context, would not produce necessary knowledge required for us to have social progress’. She further tells that ‘to subject a decadent ruling class, depending upon deception, to satire and laughter just to have momentary satisfaction, which is provided by Makarakshaya is not enough. Wijegunasinghe’s criticism might have got its own meaning and ‘truth’ according to her ideological and political doctrine. However, to counter her idea here is not my aim, but to examine the term ‘political’ which she, me and several others would want to materialise through the mobilization of masses in a revolutionary act. So, what Piyaseeli has said cannot be ‘the truth’, the absolute truth about Dharmasiri Bandaranaiyake’s theatre. For I assume Dharmasiri’s theatre to be ‘political’ and rich with enough knowledge for social action, which has to be carefully discerned and re-interpreted by responsible critics.

If politics, as in its classic definition of it, involves power struggles, conflict and repression with a universal application on any society at any historical time, Bandranaiyake’s plays can be a very good example portraying a universal truth of power politics. Especially, in the local context, when it is contextualised and re-contextualised, the effect of the political message get more and more sharpened with different interpretations of politics, rulers and their subjects.

Basically, in ‘The Dragon’ and ‘The Dictator’, Dharmasiri derives a fundamental lesson from political realism; the struggle for power and the struggle to protect that power through deception and violence. So, for me his theatre, which is more Brechtian in its form and content, becomes didactic in nature as its original aim is not to just please the audience, but to awaken them to a reality around them and create opposition against existing conditions. In the words of Volter in ‘The Dictator’ this realist political stance turns to be very much a humanist supplication; “ cry children, until a mother’s breast produce milk, cry without stopping, till a mother with mother’s love and affection come and console you”. As a dramatist Dharmasiri, like any other artist, has to first overcome the existing political barriers on artistic expressions and use his medium very tactfully. So, he chooses satirical plots with a political message and dramatises them powerfully.

In Trojan women, Dharmasiri voiced rather an idealist appeal against the war, which kills our brethren and makes our wives widows. It was a timely selection as in the local context we were embarking on a brutal war. The philosophy of the Trojan Women within, re-contextualization of this ancient Greek play created new meanings and new significations in a society being affected by a civil war. However, the idealist world view, i.e., desire for the maintenance of perpetual peace in society mainly went unheard of. It is because the power of the political idea behind a lonely attempt by an artist can only anger a clan of warlords and fail to find that mass (-media) appealing, in the absence of a political movement and criticisms by organic intellectuals.

The attempt of consciousness raising among oppressed often becomes a failed exercises or yields very little harvest in an era of mass consumption, in which ‘shopping mall’ ideology has shrouded the conscience of ‘so-called mass’. It is in fact true regarding the politics of any alternative thinking which certainly has to swim ‘against the tide’. Also when the ‘so-called ‘fourth government’, the media is often controlled by capitalist ownerships, with a motive for profits by selling ‘hot news’ or ‘what people ask for’. So, it is obvious that when media reign over citizens’ horizon of imagination, their consciousness about political reality is not so easy to be awakened, for that just one Dharmasiri would not be enough.

On the other hand, if we have, with the phantasmagorical effect of consumer capitalism, entered a post-modern context, then again the relevance of our medium becomes problematic. Specially, when there are lot of convincing stories of irrelevance of class based analyses of social relations, Dharmasiri’s theatre easily become the target of those pseudo post-modernists as well. However, if we are permitted to borrow some ideas form the ‘Post Modern Condition’, espoused by the high priest of post-modernism, Jean Franco Lyotard, we can read the politics in present day context as a ‘game of language’. In questioning that language game of the post-modern politicians, whose attire and appearance would be highly different from that of Hitler or other great dictators of the past, and who exert similar coercion and control over societies, with a toned -language and deceptions of promises, still the theatre of Dharmasiri offers us the key to identify them.

So, the message of politics expressed in Dharmasiri’s theatre is for all time; the plays being ‘texts’ in its Derridian understanding, can be re-played, re-produced and re-interpreted in different historical times and contexts. When a play, originally written in Stalinist era or under the conditions of slavery in ancient Greece, is re-contextualised in a war-ravaged society, with all the signs of loss of humanity and thirst for revenge, and exploitation of the oppressed, the theatrical enterprise of Dharmasiri becomes original and admirable. The new significations that present day viewer derives from his theatre are the results of dialectical impact of existing political reality and dramatic expression of a similar reality through the plays.

Moreover, as media, critics, intellectuals and repressive apparatus of states involve in the process of portraying, criticising, producing and censoring various dimensions of political reality that an artist may want to recreate, his work is then not just a lonely task. In fact, it becomes a war against and within all these forces. Whose side win or who is more cable of convincing of the politics of his work, politics that others would deny, is a question about the political movements in a society.

In ‘The Dragon’ what we experience is this reality of a lack of creative political force which can take on any evil political leadership or repressive ruling class at any context. Rather than blaming on the circumstances, the real and imaginative political leadership or movement is able to exploit them and defeat the politics of the oppressor. The fear psychosis that the masses are overwhelmed with about mysterious character of ‘dragons-like’ authoritarian rulers, are boldly and imaginatively deconstructed and finally laid to destruction in the hands of a leadership with right philosophy and correct action plan.

All in all, Dharmasiri as a major one among the few political dramatists in the local context has dedicated his entire life on a certain political destination that he thinks the society as a whole should embark upon to reach there. Through his theatrical depiction of agonising ruling class, passive ordinary masses and untiring and brave effort of right political leadership to awake and mobilise masses against injustice, violence and exploitation, he proposes that a better future is impossible without a revolution led by humanists, free of violence.